Stories for January 2018

Japan is planning to lift a ban on beef imports from Uruguay next year, ending a more than 17-year embargo following the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the South American nation in 2000, according to government sources in Tokyo.

The United Kingdom will make new coins this year to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein’’ as well as commemorate a century since women started gaining the right to vote. Designs on special two-pound coins will also honor the end of the First World War and the creation of the Royal Air Force in 1918, the U.K.’s Royal Mint said in a statement.

A new salary increase arrived to Venezuela -the seventh in a year-, but the purchasing power of Venezuelans continues insignificant compared to the high price of low supply due to hyperinflation. While it is not possible to slow down the variation of prices in the different products of the basic basket, any wage increase is insufficient and exacerbates the problem. In one year, salary increased 511%, while inflation in 2017 closed at 2.735%, the highest in the world.

New Year has taken off in Uruguay with a raft of utilities' rates increases which includes power, fuels, drinking water, telecommunications, urban bus fares, plus extra taxes on tobacco and gambling. Inflation in the twelve months to November was 6.30%.

Argentina's flagship of Antarctica operations is back after ten long years. The refurbished icebreaker ARA Almirante Irizar, called at Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, on New Year before leaving for the 2017/18 summer campaign.

The UK's aid budget will be shifted to projects that promote its interests, the foreign secretary Boris Johnson said underlining the money will be more sensibly distributed to support foreign policy aims such as denying safe havens to Islamist militants.

Poverty and extreme poverty levels rose in Latin America as a regional average in 2015 and 2016, after more than a decade of declines in the majority of countries, while in 2017 they are expected to hold steady, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) said.